Search

Twitter is such an important part of my PLN that this year I thought it would be a good idea to collate my top 10 tweets of 2012. These tweets are not my own tweets, but tweets that I have either RT or made a favourite.

1.

In the year of Storyline and Captivate 6, an interesting observation that shapes my instructional design decisions.

My week has been bookended by two thought-provoking blog posts about the future of learning and e-learning in particular, one from Nick Shackleton-Jones and the other by Clive Shepherd. Both made me really think about the future of learning in my organization.

I’ll start with Clive Shepherd’s post “This house believes the only way is e-learning.” In this post, Clive argues that e-learning should be the key focus for learning given the problems currently facing workplace learning. These problems include:

• A scarcity of budget for training
• A scarcity of teacher/trainer time
• A scarcity of time for learner to spend training
• Massive disruption in the employment market as a result of the economic downturn, structural changes caused by technological change and globalisation
• A requirement and a desire to reduce CO2 emissions

Along with these problems, learners have new expectations about learning:

• A demand for learning content and experiences that are highly relevant to current work issues
• A demand for immediate access to learning content and experiences
• A demand for more flexibility in how, when and where these experiences are made available
• Along with a recognition that it is no longer necessary to know everything, but instead to have access on-demand to resources

Clive believes that “traditional training” cannot help us overcome these problems. Instead, he argues that e-learning is “the only way to overcome these obstacles.”

In contrast to Clive Shepherd, Nick Shackleton-Jones doesn’t believe that e-learning is “the only way.” In fact, in “E-Learning is dead. Long live online learing” Nick argues that we are currently witnessing the end of e-learning. Comparing e-learning to the fate of the fax machine, Nick argues the demise of both have similar roots, in that they have been “overtaken by a flurry of smaller, more agile technologies.”

According to Nick, the rise of these “smaller, more agile technologies” (infographics, videos etc … ) has led to a shift away from courses to resources. This in turn has changed how instructional designers approach ADDIE. Rather than the e-learning course, the future focus, in Nick’s opinion “will be on resources and peers.”

For me, Clive and Nick are both right (and wrong) about the future. In my organization, e-learning plays a significant role and will continue to do so in the future because the problems that Clive outlines. However, recently I’ve been doing the type of instructional design work that Nick describes, using “smaller and more agile technologies” to facilitate learning. I can only see this growing more and more in the future.

Saying all this, however, I believe that the future will also include the traditional classroom. Despite the recent development of educational technologies (and theories), in my organization the traditional classroom still holds sway in discussions about training. And while the argument against grows, I don’t think this will change in the near future.